


retreating and advancing across the sky

by outruntheavalanche



Series: Exchange Fic [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: A pines for B while carrying them, Abduction, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chasing One Another Until the End of Time, Community: piningexchange, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Jedi Mind Sex, Mildly Dubious Consent, POV Ahsoka Tano, Unhealthy Relationships, hiding pining by antagonistic behavior, piningexchange 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 00:03:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20321743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: Ahsoka receives the distress signal over an unsatisfying lunch and eagerly foregoes her meal to decipher the code. The communication is fragmented, as if being interfered with by another. Another Force user, perhaps.





	retreating and advancing across the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).

> Written for LittleRaven for piningexchange.
> 
> This is an AU and I imagine it happening in place of the _Rebels_ fight.
> 
> Thanks for looking this over, R!
> 
> **Additional Warning(s):** There's some description of Vader's injuries that might be gross and possibly body-horrorish.

Ahsoka receives the distress signal over an unsatisfying lunch and eagerly foregoes her meal to decipher the code. The communication is fragmented, as if being interfered with by another. Another Force user, perhaps. 

The message is clear, though. A freighter containing food and supplies came under fire—attackers unknown—and its crew is in dire need of assistance.

After checking her fuel levels, Ahsoka quickly packs a meager bag of supplies—more of the bland, tasteless rations that had made up her lunch, her blaster and ’sabers, a spare change of clothing—and then plugs the coordinates into her navsystem. 

It won’t take her very long to get there. Maybe a few hours at most.

This war had taken so many lives already. She just hopes she’s in time to aid the survivors—if there _are_ any survivors. The thought of a supply freighter being targeted and its crew decimated clenches in her gut unpleasantly.

After she hops in her ship and makes the jump, she sits back and closes her eyes. The ship rumbles around her, almost lulling her off. But there’s a feeling she can’t shake off—a sense of danger. Like looking into the jaws of a predator just before it attacks. 

Ahsoka rubs at her chest, where the uncomfortable feeling coils around her heart like a deadly serpent. 

Why does she feel like she’s about to walk into danger? 

Slipping her hand into the pocket of her pants, Ahsoka curls her hand around her blaster just to reassure herself. 

She’s got her blaster and her lightsabers. She’s well-armed and, given that she’s gifted in the ways of the Force, not many will be able to startle her and take her by surprise.

It still isn’t all that reassuring. 

*** 

Ahsoka’s ship chirps out a message to indicate they’ve reached their destination, but there’s nothing. There’s no sign of the imperiled freighter, nor its crew or coveted supplies. Ahsoka peers out her viewport and sees nothing but endless black, dotted with faint twinkling stars. 

In fact, it almost looks _too_ black. As if it’s been manufactured. 

She feels like there are spotlights on her back, but when she turns and looks out the viewport again, she sees nothing. 

Ahsoka unbelts herself and gets up, digging her lightsabers out of her bag and clipping them to her belt. She digs her spacesuit out and steps into it, dragging the zipper up to her chin. She reaches for the helmet and pauses, her fingers twitching, hands suspended midair. 

That bad feeling is back, digging its claws into her guts, refusing to let go.

And there’s something else, now. Something muffled but unmistakably _there_. 

Ahsoka turns slowly, hand resting on the hilt of her ’saber. She half expects to see someone waiting for her in her ship, a Stormtrooper perhaps. But there’s no one. 

“You’re being paranoid,” Ahsoka says aloud, but it does nothing to reassure her. 

She’s more certain than ever that she’s being watched. That she’s been followed this whole time and that this mission was a set-up from the very start.

A crackling static hisses in her ear, then it’s all around her, enveloping her in a tight embrace. Ahsoka presses her hands against her montrals and her lightsabers clatter to her feet.

The static grows louder and louder, before it resolves into the soft hiss-click of artificial breath. 

_Vader_.

Of course it’s Vader. That explains everything, from the phony distress signal to the prickling sensation that she was being watched.

Ahsoka crouches down low and scrabbles for her lightsabers in the dark.

Suddenly, the small cockpit of her ship is illuminated in a pulsing red glow. She can’t tell if it’s an illusion being conjured by the Sith Lord or if her tiny ship has been caught in the tractor beam of his Star Destroyer.

Ahsoka looks up and gasps.

Vader looms in front of her, the hateful red light glaring off the shiny black of his inhuman visage. 

She can see her small, frightened reflection in his mask. 

Vader lifts a hand and she expects him to clench his fist, to snuff her out. Tears prick the corners of her eyes; she’d been foolish and headstrong in jumping to answer the distress signal. She should have waited until she could find backup to come with her. Instead, Ahsoka had flown right into Vader’s trap.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Vader’s voice crackles like lightning in her brain. 

Rather then clench his fist, he lifts it and Ahsoka gasps when her feet leave the durasteel floor. 

Ahsoka flails wildly, fingers clawing at the walls, struggling for purchase and finding none. Vader waves his arm and sets her back on her feet, in front of him.

“What do you want?” Ahsoka tips her chin up, trying her best to appear defiant, unafraid.

“I have what I came for,” Vader replies. 

He twists his fingers and something flares into flame in Ahsoka’s soul, and it takes her a moment before she realizes it’s the old Force bond she’d once shared with Anakin. But why should it—

“No,” Ahsoka whimpers, shaking her head. “_No_.”

A cascade of emotions torrent through her—the sting of betrayal piercing her skin like razorblades, the slug of fear slithering down her throat, the ache of loss sounding through her body. 

“You know it to be true,” he hisses.

Ahsoka flings her arms out, calling her lightsabers to her hands, but before the power of the Force can even begin to surge through her, everything explodes in a a riot of red and black. 

***

Flames. 

Ahsoka is burning.

She jerks upright and claws at her face, expecting to feel singed, melting flesh. She finds nothing, and when she turns she glimpses her reflection in the viewport. Her face is unblemished. 

She’d been dreaming. 

Ahsoka slides carefully out of the bunk she’d been stashed in, realizing she had been moved to another she while she was out. 

_Vader’s ship_, she thinks, as she gazes around, taking in her surroundings.

Vader’s nowhere to be seen, at the moment, but she doesn’t exactly feel safe. 

When she pats at her utility belt, she finds that her blaster and ’sabers are gone.

Ahsoka moves closer to the viewport, hoping to catch a glimpse of something familiar. When she does look out the viewport, Ahsoka’s dismayed to find the remains of her little ship, blasted into smithereens.

Ahsoka presses a hand against the glass and lowers her head. She’s stuck on this ship, possibly with Vader as his captive. 

As Ahsoka leans her head against the glass and closes her eyes, the embers of her Force bond with Anakin flare back into flame and the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stands up. 

She turns slowly to find herself face-to-face—in a way—with the monster who’d once been Anakin.

“You sent the phony distress signal,” Ahsoka accuses him before he can speak.

Vader remains silent, but for the hum of his breathing apparatus. Finally, after a few moments of silence, he deigns to address her: “I believed you were dead.”

Ahsoka hadn’t been expecting that. She’d been waiting for a threat, or recrimination. A tiny cruelty slid between her ribs like a knife. 

Covering up her surprise, Ahsoka stutters out, “Likewise.”

Vader chuckles, mirthlessly. “When I sent that distress beacon, I hadn’t expected to find _you_. The Force works in strange ways, doesn’t it?”

Ahsoka clenches her jaw. “That had nothing to do with the Force. You tricked me.”

Vader advances on her, his long cape dragging on the durasteel behind him. Ahsoka’s eyes drop to his hand as he extends it toward her, slowly. 

She grows deathly still as he uncurls his fingers and reaches out with a gloved hand toward her. She can sense—perhaps through their Force bond, frayed though it is—that he intends to touch her. When she closes her eyes she sees a shimmering image of it in her mind’s eye, his gloved fingers stroking down the length of her left lek in a twisted gesture of tenderness.

But before Anakin—no—before _he_ can touch her, Ahsoka clears the grit out of her throat and says, “Stop.”

She’s almost surprised that he _does_ stop, his hand coming to a standstill mere inches away from her. His gloved fingers hover over her lek, so close she can feel the heat on her skin.

She gazes up at his face—or what should be his face, if not for that awful mask. Instead, she finds herself staring at her reflection in the black mirrors where his eyes used to be. 

Ahsoka wonders what the man who had once been her Master sees when he looks back at her. Does he feel the fraying, faded tether of their Force bond between them, as she still does? Or is it different for him, he who would blaze a path across the galaxy to capture her. 

Maybe he _can’t_ feel. Ahsoka realizes she’s not sure how much of him is man and how much has become machine. 

Vader pulls his hand back and lets his arm drop. There’s no other sound now, save the disturbing hiss-click of his breathing apparatus and the low, constant rumble of the ship they’re on as it hurtles through space.

Ahsoka debates grabbing for the ’sabers she’d had clipped to her utility belt before she remembers he’d taken them at some point. She’s defenseless, her options limited. 

She never should have answered the distress call. She should have just passed on it—but even as those thoughts cross her mind, Ahsoka knows she never would have considered them in the moment. She always would have gone, the thought of leaving potential survivors to their deaths simply unacceptable. 

They always would have ended up here, with Ahsoka on his ship and her little fighter in pieces, floating aimlessly around them like so much space debris.

“You may be useful to us yet, young one,” Vader rumbles, sounding almost _fond_.

The very thought chills her blood to a frozen sludge in her veins. 

“Never,” Ahsoka says, tipping her chin up bravely. Her lekku fall over her shoulders, out of his reach. “I’d rather die.”

She can feel Vader’s eyes on her through the mask, burning into her like the flames on Mustafar.

Ahsoka waits, teetering on the edge of a precipice and wondering if the hand that Vader no doubt will offer her means to push her over the edge or stop her from falling.

With a sweep of his cape, he advances even closer, like the creeping shadow of his that climbs the walls.

“In due time, young one,” he says, with a dry chuckle. “In due time.”

Vader lifts his hand to her and Ahsoka feels invisible fingers wrapping around her throat. Ahsoka tries to pull free, but her limbs feel so heavy and suddenly she’s falling, falling into—

*** 

When Ahsoka comes to, she finds herself caged like an animal. Other than the fact this is some kind of prison—durasteel bars, a spare cot, a sliver of unnatural light peeking through a slat in the door—she has no idea where she actually is. She could be anywhere in the galaxy. With anyone.

But something deep within her tells her she’s with Anakin.

No, he’s not her Anakin anymore. He's _Vader_.

She can still feel his presence through the thick, craggy stone walls. She can’t tell if she’s only sensing the afterimage of him—his aura a disturbance in the Force like ripples in water—or if he’s actually here. Watching her from the many shadows, perhaps. 

Ahsoka presses a hand against one of the walls and finds it’s cool to the touch. Damp, almost, like she’s being kept underground.

Judging by the cell she’s been dumped in, that might not be so far from the truth.

Ahsoka sits back down on the stiff, uncomfortable cot and scuffs her heels on the floor. She thinks she can hear the steady drip of water not far off, and beyond that... 

The serpentine hiss of _his_ presence. He’s here. 

Feeling suddenly chilled—and incredibly alone—Ahsoka lifts her shackled wrists and rubs at a bare shoulder. She cowers against the cold stone wall.

Vader’s presence grows even larger in her mind, a black stain spreading and spreading, creeping ever closer. It brushes against her like invisible fingers, prodding gently at her mind, still sluggish from what was most likely a drugged sleep. 

Ahsoka recoils from it, pressing back against cool stone. 

When she tries to form a barrier between herself and Vader, she finds that she can’t. Something—_someone, him_—is dampening her powers. She can feel the weight of it on her soul like the heavy shackles binding her wrists. 

For the first time since all of this started, Ahsoka is afraid.

Vader steps into view, separated from her by the bars of her cell. Ahsoka jumps to her feet, meaning to argue with him, cajole him to free her, but he lifts a hand and she falls silent. With a flick of his wrist, the bars recede and he drifts into her prison cell like black smoke. 

“What do you want?” Ahsoka finally asks. 

Vader stares at her; though she can’t see his eyes through his mask, she can still feel them burning into her. “I’ve brought you a bit of sustenance,” he says, reaching into his cape and producing a small, blue plasteel container. 

Vader drops the container at Ahsoka’s feet and she stares down at it warily, before prodding at it with the toe of her boot. 

“Thank you,” she says, nudging the box to the side. She looks back up at Vader. “Are you going to tell me what you intend to achieve by keeping me a prisoner?”

Vader turns away from her, and Ahsoka can sense him bobbing in an ocean of indecision, as if he can’t decide if he should lie to her or tell her the truth. 

“Don’t you think you would be better served joining my side?” Vader turns back to face her. “You would be an asset to the Emperor.”

Ahsoka shakes her head. “No, never.”

Vader moves closer to her. She can’t feel any bodily heat emanating from him, only the machinelike hiss of breath and the hum and crackle of dark energy. She fights the instinct to back away from him.

He towers over her, an imposing mountain clad in a black cape and mask. Whatever had once been human in him is long dead, stamped out and buried. Ahsoka is certain of it. 

“You should feel grateful that I’ve chosen to spare you to serve the Emperor,” Vader hisses at her, reaching out and clasping her chin in his gloved fingers. He tilts her head back. “Most in your position would be groveling on their knees for their lives. But not you, young one. You always were too hardheaded and bold for your own good.”

“I learned from the best,” Ahsoka spits out, through gritted teeth.

Vader drops his hand and Ahsoka lowers her head. “Perhaps there’s hope for you yet,” he says.

Ahsoka bites back a sharp, startled laugh that threatens to bubble out of her. “You won’t break me.”

“So defiant,” he croons at her, mockingly. “Come with me.”

Ahsoka gets the sense it’s not a request but a command, so she follows Vader out of the cell and down a long, winding corridor. 

Wherever they are, it’s clearly not a ship. The place has stone walls and high, vaulted ceilings, and if Ahsoka didn’t know any better she might guess it was a temple of some sort. But what temple also had a prison cell? 

As she follows behind Vader, she can’t help but wonder if he’s walking her to her death, her final resting place. She’d refused him, and his offer to join him by Palpatine’s side; perhaps he no longer has any use for her. 

“Are you going to kill me now?” Ahsoka asks.

Vader stops and turns to regard her. “You are a fool to reject my offer,” he says, “but I do not have any plans to kill you just yet.” 

_Just yet_ lingers between them like a struck bell. 

Ahsoka’s fingers twitch against her utility belt. She wishes she still had her ’sabers. She knows she wouldn’t get very far before being cut or shot down, but the thrill of escape _is_ tempting. Resistance sings in her blood. That she’s been stripped of her weapons and her powers have been muted chafes at her like a pebble lodged in her boot.

As they come to a stop before a tall door, Vader waves a hand over her and the shackles snap off her wrists. Ahsoka rubs at her raw wrists and watches him, suspicious, but he merely waves the door open and bids her to follow. 

The room looks like it had once been a grand throne room, but now everything is draped in black shadows and despair. Pain and rage are baked into the stones that form the foundation of this place. Dark energy swirls all around Ahsoka, as if the place had been drenched in a downpour of it.

“What is this place?” Ahsoka can’t help her curiosity. She must know. 

“My home,” Vader says, tucking the shackles into a hidden pocket in his cape. “This is my meditation chamber. You are free to wander as you please, but I must not be disturbed. If you interrupt me I shall be…very unhappy.”

Ahsoka glances about, her eyes coming to rest on a tall cylindrical tube. The tube glows faintly, illuminated from within, and Ahsoka realizes it’s filled with liquid. It’s a bacta tank. 

She turns and looks back at Vader. He’s been joined by a team of droids with large, glowing yellow eyes the size of the moons of Endor. 

“Turn your face to the wall,” Vader orders. 

Ahsoka turns and stares at the wall and plots. Could she escape while Vader was being disrobed? Maybe she could flee while he was meditating. 

There’s a high-pitched whistle of air as the hermetically-sealed tube is opened, and then a splash of water. Ahsoka wants to turn, to catch a glimpse of the man who’d once been Anakin, but she remembers his threat from earlier. She digs her nails into her palms to keep from looking.

Finally, after an interminably long few minutes, the droids file out of the chamber and Ahsoka watches them leave. Once they’ve gone, she looks about the room until her eyes fall on a small, hard workbench. Ahsoka goes over to it and settles on it. When she lifts her head, her eyes land on the tube. And the man—the monster—encased inside. 

She gazes up at the figure floating in the bacta tank, his body a mess of scar tissue and still-festering wounds. His abbreviated limbs end in stumps and she can see where the prosthetics are attached, cruel needles and bits of wiring exposed and wriggling like incandescent worms. The synthetic skin that covers much of his body is pulled tightly together and fused to what’s left of his real skin with some sort of disgusting, oozy gel. It looks uncomfortable. Painful. Ahsoka can feel his agony like a ripple in her soul.

Ahsoka had once wondered if the dark lord of the Sith could feel pain, considering that maybe the Emperor kept him sedated to keep him under control, under his thumb. Now, she understands it’s the exact opposite. Palpatine keeps him in nerve-shattering, soul-searing pain at every moment, exhausting him and enraging him with the sheer magnitude of it. Vader's pain is as much a shackle as the ones that had bound her wrists.

This creature had been her—her _Anakin_. It’s still so hard for her to wrap her mind around, even after taking up her ’saber against him. Ahsoka wouldn’t have believed it to be true if she hadn’t again felt that old, familiar _tug_ in her chest when she gazed upon him in his bacta-filled tank. 

Ahsoka traces her eyes down the length of the long, thin red scar over his eye. He’s sleeping now, she thinks, his eyes lightly closed, twitching underneath the lashless lids. She supposes his eyelashes had burnt off on Mustafar as well, or perhaps whoever had made him his synthflesh hadn’t seen the need for them.

She gets up from the bench and moves closer to the tank. It glows eerily, backlit in pulsing red that throbs in time with his heartbeat. The closer she gets to the tank, the more she realizes he isn’t asleep. He’s meditating. 

Ahsoka reaches out and touches the glass lightly, tracing over the scars on his face. She wishes he could feel her through the glass. She wishes she could touch his scars, somehow take away some of the pain that’s radiating through their bond. 

Ahsoka sighs, leaving her hand pressed against the chilled glass of the tank. Her hand fits neatly over his ravaged cheek.

_I'm here_, she sends to him. 

She feels a faint stirring down the line, a ripple, and then the bond goes still again. He’d heard her through the Force, she knows it.

Ahsoka drags a fingernail over the glass, along the puckered scar tissue over his eye. She’s well familiar with this one. 

She sighs again, her breath fogging the glass. The monitors on the black durasteel unit fixed in the center of his chest continue to pulse steadily, slowly, as he meditates on. He’s in pain, she knows, but right now he almost seems... at rest. Ahsoka knows it won’t last, but she is glad for this moment. 

She pulls her hands away, glances down at the raw marks around her wrists, then back up at the figure in the tank. 

They’re both trapped. Vader by his circumstances, by the man who wields his leash, and Ahsoka by the man who'd once been her mentor and her very best friend. They all have chains to overcome. Perhaps Ahsoka could help Vader overcome his.

*** 

That evening—at least Ahsoka thinks it’s evening, she hasn’t seen a chronometer since Vader all but abducted her—he orders her to join him for dinner. 

Ahsoka’s well aware that Vader can’t eat food, not anymore. His meals are nothing more than crude pastes and tasteless fluids, pumped directly into his body through his suit of armor. He’s doing this solely for her benefit, or so it seems. 

She doesn’t think he’d poison her food, but then again she’s not really sure why he hasn’t killed her yet. 

Ahsoka joins him in the dining hall, where he waits for her at the end of a long, sleek black table. It’s empty, except for a single place setting. As Ahsoka approaches it, she sees what looks to be meat and vegetables. She casts a questioning glance at Vader.

“I haven’t poisoned the food, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” he says. 

“I’ve already turned you down. You have no reason to keep me alive,” Ahsoka points out. 

She doesn’t want to sound like she _minds_ that Vader hasn’t killed her yet, but the whole thing is rather perplexing. 

Ahsoka pulls the chair away from the table and sits down, leaning in to inspect the food _just in case_.

Reasonably assured Vader isn’t—currently—trying to kill her, Ahsoka starts picking at the meat and vegetables trying to drum up an appetite. Apparently being abducted by the most frightening villain in all the galaxy didn’t do much for one’s appetite.

She can sense Vader watching her play with her food, so she occasionally shovels a piece into her mouth and chokes it down without really tasting it. She’s distracted, her eyes drifting away from the plate in front of her to look for an escape route. 

After a few uncomfortable minutes of this, Ahsoka lifts her head.

“It’s a bit uncomfortable trying to eat with you watching me as if you’re waiting for me to drop dead,” she points out.

Vader says nothing, just keeps watching her as she pushes her food around on the plate. She chokes down a few more bites, mostly for his benefit, before pushing the plate away. 

Vader watches her quietly before getting up from the table and sweeping his cape behind him. Ahsoka considers stepping on it to be annoying, but that probably wouldn’t end well for her. Vader doesn’t seem like the sort who tolerates brattiness or humor when played at his own expense.

She follows him, though, trying her best to appear demure, subdued. She’s still pondering, wondering, though. Searching out any possible escape routes, though she keeps here head down as not to draw attention. 

There are none. Of course there aren’t. Vader had probably thought of that when building this massive monument to his own hubris. Ahsoka wouldn’t be surprised if he’d asked his builders to account for the possibility of kidnapping victims. 

Vader leads her to a dimly lit room, done up in hues of black and red. He seems to have a preference. 

Ahsoka follows him into the room and waits by the entrance. 

“Is this your room?” she asks. 

“I don’t sleep.” Vader sounds almost amused. 

“Why not?” Ahsoka asks. She’d heard of inquisitors using sleep deprivation as a form of torture; the victims usually wound up driven to insanity. 

“I have no need for it. This room is for you.” Vader gestures to a welcoming canopied bed.

“Are you trying to buy my complicity?” Ahsoka asks. “You’ll offer me the trappings of luxury before you yank them away when I refuse to bow to you?”

This time, Vader does laugh. It’s an odd sound, too mechanical to be real but not exactly _fake_ either. The noise, like the creature it explodes out of, unexpectedly, is half-man and half-machine.

“I think I should be offended you continue to question my motives,” Vader says. 

“I serve no obvious use to you,” Ahsoka snaps, her last shreds of composure falling away. “I already told you I wouldn’t bow to you or Palpatine.”

“You are correct, if you’d served no use to me I would have had you executed,” he says, emotionlessly, as if the thought of killing her—or anyone—means nothing to him. It probably doesn’t. The remnants of his soul had died on Mustafar with Padmé. “But you are still useful to me.”

Something about the way he hisses it out sends her stomach tumbling into a steep, darkened pit.

Part of her had been hoping she _was_ of no use to him. Death was preferable to being forced to capitulate to Palpatine and the monster he kept on the end of a leash. 

Ahsoka wonders, for a brief, horrifying moment, if Vader meant to violate her. She’d assumed those desires—and abilities—had burnt away on Mustafar. Perhaps she’d misjudged him.

Vader _tsk-tsk_s her, like scolding a foolish child. “You are not adept at hiding your thoughts from me, Ahsoka. Not even I would resort to such tactics. Unless…” The silence that stretches between them feels as threatening as anything he could possibly inflict upon her. “Is that something you’ve thought about much, Snips?”

Ahsoka flinches like she’s been slapped. “No. Never,” she insists, shaking her head desperately.

He’s trying to trap her, she knows that, but she can’t help but push back against his presence in her mind. The thought of Vader seeing into her most intimate thoughts—seeing all the dark, shameful things she used to think about Anakin—is terrifying. More terrifying than being stretched out on a rack and tortured, or her mind being invaded and picked over by unseen claws. 

Vader advances on her, crowding her back and back until her shoulder blades collide with stone. 

He lifts a hand and this time Ahsoka has nowhere to go. His fingers graze lightly over her lek and a shiver of electricity jolts through her. He draws his hand back.

“Don’t you miss this, Snips?” 

“Don’t call me that,” Ahsoka snarls, baring her fangs.

Vader laughs. “We could have such fun if you just gave in. If you bent the knee for Palpatine.”

Ahsoka shakes her head again, as if trying to shove away the prickle of truth to the words. “Stop.”

Vader’s presence is heavy in her mind now. She’d let down her guard and now he’s inside her, digging into her thoughts and dreams and memories. Her limbs feel heavy, almost drugged. When Vader touches her again, fingers grazing over the slope of her collarbone, she pushes ineffectively at him. He traces his finger down, between her breasts. He doesn’t touch her there—not like she’d once wanted, as a silly teenager harboring a forbidden crush on her Master—but her skin still bursts into flame anyway.

Vader seems to know he’s got her in the palm of his hand in more ways than one.

Ahsoka lifts a hand, grasping onto his shoulder, meaning to push him away. Instead, her fingers dig into his armored suit. 

“If the Jedi Order had known what was on your mind,” Vader scolds, wrapping his hand loosely around her neck. “They never would have invited you back in.”

Ahsoka reaches up and grabs onto his arm, expecting him to start choking her. But the pressure never comes. “I was just a child,” she protests, tugging on his arm. “A normal teenager.”

She feels Vader dig through more and more of her memories. One of them flashes behind her eyelids: a hazy fantasy of some sort. Ahsoka in her bunk, tossing and turning, struggling to find sleep. Finally, throwing the covers aside and getting up, padding barefoot to a window and throwing it open. 

Moonlight streaming into the room, tracing her lines and curves in silvery light. 

The Ahsoka in her dream reaches up and slips off her top, then her pants follow. She leaves them pooling at her feet. She stands naked in the caress of the moonlight, eyes closed, head tilted back. 

The door to her chamber slides open and Anakin stands in the darkened entry. Anakin strides to her and Ahsoka turns, their bodies colliding in the dark. Lips meet lips, hands roam over bare skin. The vision of Anakin drags Ahsoka to the stone floor and suddenly he’s pinning her down, fingers questing—

“Enough,” Ahsoka snaps, shattering the fantasy. She forcibly shoves Vader out of her mind. “_Enough_.”

Vader steps back. His breathing is harsh, more so than usual. “We could rule the galaxy together,” he tells her. 

Ahsoka reaches up and rubs at her throat. “That’s what you want? Someone to rule alongside you?” she asks.

Vader pulls his shoulders back, drawing himself to his full, impressive height before her. “You will be protected. We could change everything.”

“I don’t understand,” Ahsoka says, shaking her head.

“Someday, the student will overthrow the master,” he says. “When I’m Emperor, there will be a place for you at my right-hand side.”

Ahsoka drops her hand. Her mind is still raw, chafed after being picked over by Vader. She can still see her dream vision of Anakin, lain over Vader, beckoning to her. 

Even though she knows she cannot accept his offer, there’s a part of her that wants to say yes. That wants to bend her knee for him, and for Palpatine, if only to keep him. 

“And if I say no?” Ahsoka asks. 

“I will let you go,” he says. “But I will not stop hunting you. Not until I have you.”

Ahsoka rubs her hands over her face. It is a mistake; she lets down her guard for just a moment, and then Vader is back in her mind. This time, he doesn’t pry out her juvenile fantasies and dreams. This time, he sends a spark of heat through their Force bond, a sizzle of electricity that bolts through Ahsoka and coils tight in her core. 

Her eyes fly open and she drops her hands.

“What are you doing—” Ahsoka reaches out, blindly, trying to bat at him, push him away. 

“I am showing you what we could be,” he tells her. 

She feels Vader’s gloved hand brush against her face, lightly. If he were someone else—if she were someone else—it would be almost tender. The heat coils tighter and tighter within her.

Vader pulls her close—her toes drag against the stone as she’s lifted in his invisible embrace—and Ahsoka clutches onto his arm to steady herself. 

Something unspoken passes between them then. It hums along their Force bond, settling behind Ahsoka’s breastbone. 

Vader sweeps her up into his arms, with minimal effort, and carries her back to that dark, sumptuous room. 

Ahsoka knows she should protest, she should fight, but she does neither as Vader sets her on the bed. She’d accuse him of dampening her powers and some other trickery to keep her sedate, but she knows that’s not what’s happening now. Her last defenses have fallen. Everything that’s happening now is because she _wants_ it to happen.

He kneels beside her, until their eyes are level.

Vader leans closer and Ahsoka does not move away from him. Invisible fingers drag over her bare skin, questing under her clothes. They crawl down her body to slide her trousers down her hips. 

Ahsoka clenches her fingers on the sheet underneath her as Vader exposes her. He gazes down at her and Ahsoka wishes she could lift the helmet to see his face, to see how _he_ sees her. 

Those invisible fingers dart over her skin, between her legs, across her bare breasts, leaving a trail of fire as they go. Ahsoka jerks and gasps, legs parting involuntarily—or so she tells herself—as a solid presence presses between her thighs. 

“You are mine,” Vader tells her. 

“Yes, yes, I’m yours,” Ahsoka babbles, the words spilling past her lips. “Please.”

There is a small part of her, buried deep inside, that protests. That urges her to fight, to not give in. But when Vader’s presence begins to seep into all her cracks, to fill her up, to press deep, Ahsoka gives in. 

He fills her completely, consuming her as much as he invades her. Ahsoka gasps, thrusting her hips helplessly against air and the heavy weight that pins her to the bed.

“I’ve searched for you across galaxies,” he says, as he moves over and in and around her. “I’ve wanted to have you for years, and now you’re mine. You belong to me.”

A band tightens around Ahsoka’s neck and her eyes fly open. Vader stands over her, hands uplifted, fingers clenched. Ribbons of dark energy curl around Ahsoka’s arms and legs, spreading her out, putting her on display for him. Vader moves closer, reaching between her legs and drawing a gloved finger through her slick. 

Ahsoka pulses around him—his energy, buried so deep inside her that she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be free of him. 

“Please,” she whimpers, not sure what she’s begging for. 

Death, release, either. Both.

Ahsoka pulls at the invisible bonds that chain her to the bed. 

“I called for you, and you came,” Vader says, bending over her. 

Suddenly, the pressure that had been filling her up is gone and Ahsoka aches for it. But only for a moment. Vader is upon her, his fingers pushing into her. Ahsoka bites hard on her bottom lip, copper flooding her mouth, as he thrusts deeply. She bucks her hips to meet his movements, and she’s so close.

He must sense it because he quickens his movements, fingers sliding in and out noisily. With his other hand, he pins her against the mattress by her throat. 

Ahsoka pulls her lips back to show him her fangs.

She feels him winding around their Force bond, his energy coiling within her now. Ahsoka chases after the feeling—after him—mindlessly. Relentlessly. She won’t stop until she has him.

The feeling inside her starts to unwind, as if being unraveled by Vader’s hand.

Ahsoka struggles against his hand on her neck. A third finger joins the other two buried deep inside her and Ahsoka bites off a scream. 

Her mind feels both too alert and sluggish, sparking with fire and drowning in honey. 

Vader plucks at their Force bond with his mind and Ahsoka jerks against him, the beginnings of her orgasm stirring within her. She clenches around his fingers, thighs trembling, as the feeling rises like a wave. 

“Anakin—Vader—” Ahsoka stammers out his names.

Vader’s hand clamps around her throat and for a moment she thinks he’s going to choke her. 

The orgasm that rips through her like a supernova should leave her feeling ashamed, but it just leaves her limp and heavy-limbed on the bed. She shudders as their joined energy funnels through her in a liquid heat, coalescing between her thighs in a final burst of heat. 

Ahsoka collapses back on the bed, drenched in sweat and her own slick desire. For _him_. As she slowly comes back to herself, the shame she hadn’t felt before starts knocking at her door.

Vader stands, his suit creaking at the joints. He wipes his gloved hand off on his cape. “Will you stay?” he implores of her.

Ahsoka stares up at him as she tries to catch her breath. “I—I can’t stay with you.”

“Even now?” Vader queries. 

Ahsoka sits up, drawing her knees to her chest. “My friends will come looking for me.”

“They won’t,” Vader insists. “They will follow your coordinates and find your ship, destroyed. They’ll assume you died.”

She knows he’s probably right. No one in the Rebellion knows where she went. She hadn’t had a chance to tell anyone before she jumped in her ship and leapt into hyperspace. She’d been a fool.

“If you keep me here, what will you do to me?” Ahsoka asks.

“You will sit at my right hand,” he says. 

Ahsoka swallows against a catch in her throat. “And if I say no?” 

“I will let you go, as I said before. But I will never stop hunting you,” he says.

He no longer sounds menacing or threatening to her. She is no longer afraid of him. He is not her Anakin, he’s something else now. 

Ahsoka stands on wobbly legs and steps into her trousers, before pulling her shirt over her head and smoothing the material down. “Is that a promise?” she asks, quirking a wry smile at him.

Ahsoka steps up to him, until they’re close enough to touch. She reaches up and presses her palm against the plasteel that hides his scarred, burned face from her. Vader holds himself still, as if fighting himself to keep from touching her. 

He says nothing as she steps back, though their Force bond vibrates between them like a shimmering gold thread. 

Ahsoka takes that as a yes.


End file.
